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SEO News for March 2008 from searchenginejournal.com

Mahalo : Like It or Not, It’s a Good Service for Web Users
After some discussions at SMX last week with other members of the search marketing industry (community) I was quite surprised to find that I am one of the only people I know who works in search that actually likes the Mahalo project and really do feel that the overall opinion of Mahalo by various members [...]

Pluggd : Keyword Matching Within Videos
With the rapid rise in video and audio content online, there is an immediate need for search technologies that can catalog and search media content based on content in addition to the meta-data provided alongside. Pluggd is one such firm that is seeking to provide the answer with its HeatMap interface that makes it possible [...]

Google Webmaster Tools Not Updating Sitelinks
I’ve noticed that the Search Engine Journal listings in Google have been showing Sitelinks for a good month or so now, but noticed that those site links are not the exact ones I’d like to see listed in the Google index when people search for “search engine journal“, my name or other terms which serve [...]

Future of Ask.com? Layoffs, but keeping Teoma
Last week it was rumored that there would soon be some big shake-ups over at IAC’s Ask.com, including layoffs and the possible abandonment of Teoma, the technology that powers Ask’s search engine. Today a source indicated that the rumor that Ask would be ditching Teoma was incorrect, however did not dispute or even comment [...]

Compete Acquired for $75 Million
Compete has been acquired by TNS (Taylor Nelson Sofres plc) for $75 million, adding the Compete analytics and web traffic tracking suite to its current digital offerings. A rather respected alternative to Alexa, Compete conducts analysis of Internet clickstream data as tacked by over 2 million people, who serve as a sample of the US online [...]

Google Sitelinks FAQ : Everything You Want to Know About Sitelinks
Want to learn more about Google Sitelinks? I sure do after discovering some issues with the Sitelinks of my sites not updating in Google Webmaster Tools. Cristian Mezei has put together an ultimate (yet unofficial) FAQ on Google Sitelinks at SEOPedia : Google Sitelinks: The Ultimate FAQ The very in depth overview includes information such as [...]

Dedicated vs. Shared IP Addresses and SEO
Is having a dedicated IP address critical for achieving great Google rankings and if an IP address is shared among many sites, is the PageRank for each site diluted? This is, believe it or not, still a very common question in the SEO world, despite the search engines addressing these concerns. Over at DigitalPoint a reader [...]

Google Print Ads Running in 750 Newspapers, Yahoo Partners with 634 Newspapers
Google Print Ads, the arm of Google AdWords which runs ads in remnant newspaper ad space, is now working with over 750 newspapers according to Stephanie Davis, Print Ads Head of Publisher Development. Davis made this announcement in Orlando last week during the Newspaper Association of America Marketing Conference. From Local Onliner: Davis said that newspapers and [...]

Microsoft Expands Online Business Services
The battle for online business application software is about to heat up as Microsoft is set to expand the coverage of its Online Business Services. The service was previously available as a paid subscription to business with a population of 5,000 or more. But Microsoft is suiting for a head on battle with Google’s Search [...]

Search Marketing Jobs : GoDaddy.com and JOBFOX
Sifting through the new search marketing job openings on the SEJ Search Marketing Jobs Board and noticed some rather nice companies currently have openings for the SEO’s and search marketers out there who are currently job hunting. GoDaddy.com is hiring a Search Engine Marketing Specialist : The Search Engine Marketing Specialist builds and manages online search advertising [...]

AdWords Automatic Matching - Lamborghini-Ad for: “reelect obama 2012″ Query, Right!
Google launched without making much public fuzz about it, the beta tests of a new feature for Google AdWords called “Automatic Matching”. Dan Thies over at SEO Fast Start broke this just over one week ago on February 22, 2008 and warned advertisers not to “fall for this” and disable this option (which gets obviously enabled [...]

Microsoft Upgrades adCenter Analytics Tool
Still remember Project Gatineau? Microsoft’s analytics tools and its direct answer to Google Analytics. Yes, it’s still alive and working despite the lack of announcements and buzz, until now.  Microsoft is giving its adCenter Analytics a much needed boost starting with the waiving of the $5 adCenter sign up fee. Aside from these, the upgraded analytics [...]

Best GMail Targeted Google AdWords Ad Ever
Just checked my Google GMail Inbox and saw this ad from Reunion.com : Sure it’s highly untargeted, but Reunion.com does very broad advertising and given the was the ad kind of camoflages itself into the GMail Inbox (I’m thinking that they targeted the term inbox for this ad or did some page targeting deal) AND the [...]

Tellme to Yahoo: Don’t Worry About Microsoft Takeover
Over the weekend, the AP ran a story about Tellme, a Silicon Valley company which makes the technology behind directory assistance and other voice-controlled services that was acquired by Microsoft about a year ago.  Mike McCue, founder of Tellme, tells how ten months into his “marriage” with Microsoft, he doesn’t regret selling it.  The article [...]

Ask.com Already Serving Google Search Results
Ask.com, which yesterday laid off 8% of its search related workforce and announced that it will now rebrand as an informational portal for women (timewarp back to 1998), is apparently already serving limited tests of Google powered results in Ask.com search results. Search Engine Roundtable reports that a forum member saw limited Powered by Google results, [...]

AOL Launching 12 New Sites in 2008
Bloomberg.com reports AOL will be launching a dozen sites within the next six months to try and increase its market share in terms of traffic to Google and Yahoo. Declining subscriptions and change of views in the company is leading AOL to become an ad network as we seen in 2007 with the acquisition of [...]

Yahoo’s Struggle to Avoid Microsoft Takeover Continues, Speeds Up Talk with AOL
As Yahoo continues to struggle in trying to avoid a possible Microsoft takeover, its search for an ally continues as well. Despite pressures on the Yahoo Board to hold an annual meeting, Yahoo is planning to bid some more time to reach a good deal with a possible ally, AOL. The Wall Street Journal outlines Yahoo’s [...]

Google Tests Search Box within Search Results
Both Search Engine Land and TechCrunch are reporting that Google search results page are showing additional search boxes within search results. The search box usually appears if you search for big sites comprised of networks of microsites. If you enter a search term into the search box, Google crawls the sites microsites and display the [...]

Ask.com Cuts 40 Jobs, Gary Price Among Those Laid Off
Ask.com has followed Yahoo in laying off a good percentage of its workforce, with the announcement that 8% of its employees, totaling 40 people, will be laid off. Gary Price, a strong ambassador for Ask.com, librarian research advocate and author of the Resource Shelf blog was among those let go by Ask.com : This two year [...]

Google VP is New Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg, the Vice President of Global Online Sales &  at Google for six years, has deflected to Facebook where she will serve as their new Chief Operating Officer.  Facebook announced the move today, and Sandberg will officially join the Facebook team just after Easter on March 24, 2008. As Facebook’s new COO, Sandberg will be [...]

SMX West Round-up
The Santa Clara convention center is rather big. Its sprawling footprint crosses seven or eight zip codes, several counties and encompasses at least three unique ecosystems. It was like I had breakfast in Sunnyvale, attended sessions in Santa Clara and attended a Google event somewhere near San Jose and I didn’t leave the building once. [...]

Yahoo Unveils New Tool for Mobile Content Management
Continuing their efforts in the mobile realm, Yahoo surprised us today with the launch of onePlace, a mobile application that aggregates and filters content for users.  Several have already likened the yet-to-be-released tool to MyYahoo for mobile users. Yahoo’s onePlace fits along nicely with oneConnect, which was revealed last month.  onePlace incorporates an RSS reader, but [...]

Google Launches Gears for Mobile Devices
Google Gears is a plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, that allows users to interact with compatible websites while you are offline. Today, Google brought Gears to mobile devices, however there’s one hitch - it will only run on Internet Explorer Mobile. If your mobile device runs WebKit, Opera Mini, or some [...]

SEO Q&A : Should You Use Google Webmaster Tools?
Personally, I’m a pretty big advocate of using Google Webmaster Tools, Live.com’s Webmaster Center and Yahoo Site Explorer to upload XML Sitemaps and track the ways the various search engines are indexing my sites. Google Webmaster Tools also lets us control the Sitelinks which are being served in Google results, alerts us to error pages [...]

EU Regulators Close to Granting Google’s Acquisition of Double-Click
Looks like the European Union is set to allow Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of Double-Click as speculators have predicted. The EU ruling might even come earlier than the April 2 deadline to as early as next week. Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence said in a Bloomberg report that “the deal will ultimately go through.” Adding [...]

Yahoo Adds MySpace Button to Toolbar : Sign of Yahoo-NewsCorp Partnership?
I just logged on to my computer after returning home after a meeting and saw this new button on my Yahoo toolbar, for MySpace : Is this the sign of a new partnership between Yahoo and NewsCorp’s Fox Interactive, the parent company of MySpace, in an effort to build a stronger brand between the two and [...]

Industry Benchmarking and Data-Sharing Features in Google Analytics
Google just rolled out industry benchmarking and data-sharing features for its web analytics tools. Industry benchmarking lets analytics users compare their websites traffic data with other sites in the same industry that their site belongs to. This feature gives site owners insights on how traffic performances of their site compares to other sites’ performance and whether [...]

Yahoo Delays Proxy Fight to Explore Alternatives
Yahoo has extended the time allowed for shareholders to nominate directors, in an attempt to bide some time while the company explores alternative solutions amid Microsoft’s unsolicited buyout offer.  Yahoo said that in amending their bylaws and extending the deadline, the board can continue to look into alternatives “without the distraction of a proxy contest.” The [...]

Security Firm Confirms that Google’s Android SDK Has Multiple Vulnerabilities
According to Core Security Technologies, Google’s Android SDK faces multiple remotely exploitable vulnerabilities.  Core Security issued an advisory, indicating heap and interflow overflow issues with Android, and reserved eight CVE identifiers.  They’ve also outlined a proof of concept exploit, including technical descriptions. According to Core Security: “Exploitation of these vulnerabilities to yield complete control of a phone [...]

Googlers Bet on Internal Company Products, Win Cool Stuff Like T-Shirts and Cash
For the past two and a half years, Google has been asking its employees to make their predictions and bets on everything from their perception of projects, to the predicted number of Gmail users by the end of the year. Googlers make the bets anonymously with fake Google “money”, which allows Google to track [...]

Microsoft’s Bill Gates Slams Google Apps
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates doesn’t like Google, and never misses an opportunity to take a dig at them.  In his latest jab at the Mountain View search giant, Gates bashed Google Apps, stating that they haven’t a clue how to provide enterprise grade software, and that their application suite is proof of that. Bill Gates issued [...]

Best of the Web SES New York Charity Party
In what has become a yearly tradition, Best of the Web (BOTW.org) is hosting the Internet Marketers of NY Charity Party on Tuesday March 18th. The party is for Search Engine Strategies attendees and anyone interested in Internet Marketing in the New York area. Proceeds from the BOTW Internet Marketers of NY Charity Party will go [...]

Digg for Sale at $225 Million : Google &Microsoft Entering Bidding War
Michael Arrington loves to get scoops, even when those scoops (er, rumors) don’t actually turn out to become reality, but with ValleyWag breathing down your back, I can’t really blame him. Enter the latest Digg acquistion rumor. to hit the front page of TechCrunch (which now means every single blog in the world will report on [...]

Hot SEO Jobs : Hotels.com, TechWeb &Classmates.com
This week, on the SEJ Search Marketing Jobs board, three large online brands posted openings in SEO management roles for search marketing and search engine optimization specialists who are looking to move on with a high profile online publishing role; Hotels.com, TechWeb’s InformationWeek.com & Classmates.com. Here is a run down of the positions : Classmates.com SEO Manager [...]

Save Money to Make Money : Paid Search Auditing &Quality Control
Theres an old adage in business that says, You have to spend money to make money. As anyone who has experienced the power of effective advertising will confirm, the adage rings true time and time again. You have to tell the public what you offer before they know that youre the one to buy it [...]

AdWords to Incorporate Landing Page Load Time to Ad’s Quality Score
AdWords account holders will have something to expect some time next week when AdWords starts measuring the loading time of an ad’s landing page. Loading time is the amount of time it takes for users to see the landing after clicking on an advertiser’s link. Loading time is a very important factor in determining whether ad [...]

Google Analytics Now Measures Audio Ads Performance
This is the second part of the announcement made by Google Analytics a couple of days ago regarding benchmarking and opt-in settings. The latest enhancement to Google’s Analytics is the integration of the Analytics to Audio ads. With this new feature, Analytics users who implement audio ads in their sites would now be able to see [...]

Yahoo Bid Costs Bill Gates the #1 Spot on Forbes’ Rich List
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is no longer the world’s richest person. He lost that title today, after having held onto it for an astounding 13 years. Taking over as the world’s richest person is the American investor Warren Buffett, who increased his fortune by $10 billion in the past year. Comparatively, Bill [...]

Commission Disfunction and FraudClick : A Peppered Rant
OK, I dont know exactly where Im going with the title (tried to come up with a good one for Valueclick but really couldnt.) For those of you whove been following SEJ (Search Engine Journal), Im sure you’ve seen my post on ValueClick and my experience with them as an advertiser. The story still gets [...]

“Google Calendar Sync� Lets You Sync with Outlook Calendar
This week, Google launched a new application known as “Google Calendar Sync”, which allows you to sync your Google Calendar with Microsoft’s Outlook Calendar. Not only will you be able to view your Outlook Calendar events in Google Calendar, but you can also now view your Google Calendar events in Outlook Calendar. Google [...]

Google Gives in to Pentagon Demands to Remove Images of Military Bases
After detailed, street-level photographs of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas appeared in Google’s controversial “Street View”, the Pentagon acted quickly to have the images removed, calling them a threat to national security.  Because of this security threat, Google is no longer permitted to take pictures of military installations. Google takes pictures of locations in [...]

Direct URL Visit Brings More Site Earnings
This is could be yet again another blow on the effectiveness of SEO and PPC as a study conducted by Engine Ready, an Internet Marketing Ready that neither of the two brings more revenues on Internet marketing site. As cited by the New York Times, Engine Ready analyzed 18.7 million visits in a span of two [...]

Twitter As a Traffic Generator : Set Up a TwitterFeed
This morning I awoke to update myself on the scandal and news surrounding the blog post on optimizing start-up costs by Jason Calacanis, and clicked over to his blog homepage, instead of the post itself. I then came across Jason’s post on his 9,000 + Twitter followers and read this quote : “Twitter is the [...]

How And Why To Monitor Google Rankings
Why to constantly keep track of your targeted SERPs? When done regularly and properly, this analysis may help you with your most important SEO campaign challenges. By tracking your targeted keyword search engine results, you will: learn new emerging SEO techniques; keep track of your well established competitors; timely spot your new competitors and their tactics; watch [...]

Yahoo &Twitter Ad Partnership in the Works?
I just signed up for a new Twitter account today and my first Twitter generated friend was Yahoo! or Yahoo Search Marketing’s YahooAdBuzz Twitter profile. Yes, this could just be a coincidence, but Twitter was added to Yahoo MyBlogLog last week and I really cannot see anyway the company is currently monetizing itself. Yahoo has been [...]

Become the Next Presidential Candidate with Social Networking
CNNs Rick Sanchez reported today on the new Rolling Stone article on the success of Barack Obamas campaign. I havent read the article myself yet but it reveals the secret to Obamas successful grass roots campaign is due to social networking online. Sure, Howard Dean did reach the people online in his last presidential candidacy but [...]

How To Quickly Check Your Rankings
There are plenty of online tools allowing to check your rankings in a variety of search engines. I have limited them to 3 main (my favorite) tools - all three are slightly different and can be used for different purposes. SEOMoz Rank Checker - the most powerful feature of the tool is that it saves history [...]

Google DoubleClick Deal Approved in EU
CNNMoney reports that the European Commission has cleared the $3.1 billion dollar buyout of DoubleClick by Google, after the EU commission has been debating on the buyout and its effect on web users, privacy and the Internet economy since Novermber. The European Commission ruled that the Google DoubleClick transaction will more than likely not have harmful [...]

Get Paid to Click on Ads: Unethical Web Marketing
I was answering some questions on the Digital Point forum when I came across a thread about getting paid to click on ads, instantly, a red flag was raised. Getting paid to click on ads? The thread was started by a company called AdBuck.net. How do they work? You register to their website and they [...]

Yahoo Opens Ad for Adobe Program to All Publishers
If the lack of hype over Yahoo’s new advertising program is an indication of its impending failure, then the Yahoo Ads for Adobe may soon see the light eternal repose. The YPN blog announced this as early as last Friday, and I didn’t see any search engine advertising blog or site covering it. Either Yahoo [...]

Repackaged Google Custom Search Launches as a New Vertical SE
At first look Topicle may seem to be a new vertical search engine. But taking a closer look would reveal that it is just a repackaged search engine utilizing Google Custom Search. Developed by ex-Googler product manager Steffen Mueller, Topicle is a good improvement of the straight-forward Google Custom Search. Ironically, Topicle’s About page never mentioned [...]

FyberSearch Search Engine
FyberSearch got its popularity for having been started by the then 19 year old Nathan Enns. The engine sports a lot of options from a pure search perspective and also has entered a few specialized niche search areas along the way. Some of the very interesting features tried out at the engine are the sentence searching [...]

Alltop Launches, Do We Need Another News/RSS Aggregation Site?
Guy Kawasaki has launched his new news aggregation site, Alltop. This service from Guy’s very own words is an “online magazine rack� that displays news from selected top online publications and blogs. Aiming to satisfy the needs of the 99% of Internet users who never use an RSS feed reader or who would not bother [...]

Link Building Via Blog Comments : Is It Spamming Or Not?
Like any other ‘minor’ link building - blog commenting is also useful. Because of how blog comment spam has arisen, the search engines are most likely to develop (or to be developing) ways to filter good comments from spammy ones. So an important question arises: “If I build links via blog commenting - do I [...]

Is Yahoo Joining the OpenSocial Alliance?
Citing a source with direct knowledge of Yahoo plans, NYT is reporting that Yahoo is seriously considering plans to join to Google-led OpenSocial Alliance. Launched sometime last year, the OpenSocial Alliance currently has MySpace, Bebo and several other social networking sites to its fold. A Yahoo spokeswoman who neither denied nor confirms the rumor said that [...]

Six Explosive Organic &Paid Link Building Tips
My name is Loren Baker and I’m a link builder. I admit it, I’m a link building SEO and I’ve been building links for clients for 10 years. I’m also the owner and editor of Search Engine Journal and I’ve decided to be a bit more transparent about my link building philosophy. So every week I [...]

Yahoo Opens Yahoo! Research Israel Lab
Yahoo has opened a new research lab in Haifa; the Yahoo! Research Israel Lab, which will be led by Dr. Ronny Lempel. Lempel is a renowned information organization and retrieval expert who will report directly to Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates, vice president of Yahoo! Research according to Yahoo. The Yahoo! Research Israel Lab will focus on boiling [...]

Superpages.com &Local.com Renew and Expand Advertising Partnership
Local.com and Idearc Media Corp., parent of Superpages.com have renewed and expanded their local advertising distribution agreement under which Idearc Media will continue to place its Superpages.com performance based advertisers on Local.com and Local.com’s network. Superpages.com’s performance-based advertisers will continue to receive preferred placement on the Local.com website. Performance-based advertising products generate revenues when consumers connect [...]

Google Expects to be “Very Significant� in Display Advertising
Google have all but conquered contextual-based advertising and are the clear leader in that area, however, they’ve yet to take the top spot in another area of online advertising: display advertising. However, the company does expect a bright future in this area, and are expecting to have a “very significant position” by 2008-2009. Key to [...]

Google DoubleClick Sends Email to DoubleClick/Dart Clients on Final Acquisition
The Google DoubleClick acquisition has just gone through the EU hurdle, which means Google and DoubleClick can finally seal the acquisition deal. DoubleClick just sent this email out to all of their clients. Makes for an interesting read. [Thanks Scott]

News Corp Won’t Battle Microsoft for Yahoo
In their efforts to avoid a takeover by Microsoft, Yahoo has been looking to the likes of AOL, News Corp. (MySpace), and Google to help fend off the Redmond giant.  But now, it appears that at least one of them is dropping out of the game.  According to the San Jose Mercury News, Ruport Murdoch [...]

Natural SEO FAQ - Linking In And Out
I plan on starting the short new series at SEJ explaining most dubious and controversial SEO questions from the keep-things-natural point of view. If you look natural, no algorithm changes will affect you. Of course, everything might happen and Google does make mistakes too (no wonder, huh?) but keeping your SEO tactics natural, you will [...]

AOL Acquires Bebo for $850 Million
AOL has pulled off a major move in acquiring the social network Bebo for $850 million in cash from under the noses of Yahoo and other companies which had been rumored to be after the social community. Bebo is based out of the UK, San Francisco and Texas and has become the social network of [...]

Google to Launch Ad Manager Service
Google is launching a new service that aims to help web publishers, specifically those with small-to-medium size sales force, manage their direct ads serving. Ad manager, which Google will offer as a free service will also help publishers in serving relevant ads on their web sites. Looking at the simple illustration of how Ad Manager works [...]

Yo! SEO Raps! Mo Serious Raps on Search Marketing, Paid Linking and Social Media
I just cannot get enough of these search marketing rap videos from Mo Serious at Pop Labs. They’re smart, witty and entertaining … very clever and relevant lyrics and excellent hip hop style. I linked to the Link Building Rap in an earlier post, and here are the videos for the Paid Search Rap, Social Media [...]

The Link Building Rap : Hip Hop Meets SEO
Today has been a big linking day, between two posts here at Search Engine Journal on link building and blog comment links leading to some intense discussions. I was running down the Google blended search results for the term “link building” and came across this video which capped of the perfect day, it’s the Link Building [...]

Top Google Exec Donates $3 Million to SJSU Engineering Dept.
Omid Kordestani, Google’s senior vice president of global sales & business development, has made a generous $3 million donation to his alma mater, San Jose State University’s College of Engineering.  His gift will establish an endowed chair to support faculty teaching in multidisciplinary programs at the college. In Forbes recent list of worldwide billionaires, Kordestani was [...]

Google to Hold Web 2.0 Developer Event in May
This week, Google announced that it will be holding a developers event in May that will cover  a variety of topics as related to “Web 2.0″ application development.  The event, known as “Google I/O” will span two days on May 28-29, 2008, and will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Google engineers will [...]

How to Build Links with Email Marketing
Quality links to your website remain one of the strongest contributors to high organic rankings in search engines. Plus, a link from a popular website could bring you increased traffic and brand recognition. All you email marketers out there may not realize the potential role you could play in generating links to your organization’s website. [...]

Piwik : Open Source Web Analytics Challenges Google
Piwik has launched as an open source alternative to Google Analytics under a GPL license which tracks popular pages, referring keywords, languages and is open for developers to build their own plugins specifically for their web analytics needs. [Live Demo] Similar to Google Analytics, Piwik uses a simple javascript embed to collect data and can be [...]

Connect with Search Engine Journal on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
Some of our readers have noticed that recently Search Engine Journal has been popping up in their Facebook Social Maps and Twitter accounts, and have responded quite positively by joining SEJ’s groups and Twitter feeds. One thing I’ve realized this week is that not everyone obtains their news via an RSS feed or RSS aggregator [...]

12 Search Engines Which Can Replace Ask.com
Ask.com was/is one of the most resourceful and innovative search engines on the market and has claimed a relatively significant chunk of online search market. Its Teoma technology (called ExpertRank later) uses subject specific popularity to rank the results and the Ask.com team has integrated authority content driven Smart Answers and blended search into [...]

Microsoft Eyeing Ad Yield Management Solutions Provider, Rapt
Microsoft announced that it is planning to buy Rapt Inc., an advertising yield management solution for digital media publishers. Microsoft is planning to integrate Rapt and its technology and information and advisory services offerings, to Atlas Publisher Suite of its Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. This will allow Microsoft to provide its customers with integrated [...]

Google: Bots Haven’t Broken Our Captchas Yet
As the amount of spam coming from Gmail accounts has been increasing in recent months, some have suggested that spammers have come up with a way to break past the captchas that protect Gmail with automated bots. Google, however, contends that this is simply not the case, and suggests instead that the driving force behind [...]

Organic Listings Forum : Google PageRank, Blogs and Paid Links
How Relevant is Google PageRank? Mike Grehan is moderating this open forum with Greg Boser, Dave Naylor and Jill Whalen on the panel. PageRank is not as important as it used to be but it is important in terms of crawling frequency and amount of total pages which can be supported. Using NoFollow tools to scupt PageRank [...]

How to Organize Your Keyword Modifiers to Create Long Tail Strategy
What is a keyword modifier? A modifier is a word that in combination with your core keyword creates your long tail strategy (definition by Dan Thies). Most often a thematic modifier can be: a word of a general meaning (e.g. "guide", "best", etc); a word related to your niche (e.g. "quote" for the finance niche or a [...]

Top Search Based Facebook Apps to Help You Find Anything
The intermixing of search and Facebook is minimal in terms of web search, as when I was browsing through the list of search oriented Facebook apps I couldn’t help but noticed that those that are the most popular are the ones used for looking and finding friends. This is but understandable since Facebook is a [...]

Google launches open source code browser
The Google Open Source blog is announcing about the new source code browser for Google code’s project hosting feature. The browser features easier navigation through an open source project’s subversion (SNV) repository. It also enables fast direct browsing tree, syntax highlighting, change history, and easy to read diffs.

Can Yahoo Deliver with its Detailed Financial Plan for 2008?
If there is one company that should be reading Yahoo’s 2008 financial plan, it’s got to be Microsoft. The detailed financial plan for 2008 which was submitted by Yahoo to investors fully supports its claim that Microsoft has undervalued Yahoo’s worth when Microsoft submitted a $45 billion bid. The detailed financial plan outlined Yahoo’s [...]

Igniting Viral Campaigns Session at SES New York
Most talk about or plan to do it, while the reality is that very few companies do. A viral campaign is probably the best way to spread buzz and word-of-mouth marketing for branding purposes, drive traffic, or even monetize a site. I will post my notes from this session to help you understand what a viral [...]

Search Around the World : Europe and the UK
Search Around the World : Europe and the UK : Andrew Girdwood of the UK, Thomas Bindl from Germany, Sebastian Langlois of France, and Joost de Valk from the Netherlands. SEO in the UK Andrew Girdwood of Big Mouth Media says Big Mouth Media is the biggest search marketing firm in Europe, especially the UK. Andrew reckons [...]

Creating Compelling Ads at SES NY
If you are using paid search as one of your online marketing strategies (who isn’t, if you’re not, get with the program,) this was one of the most important sessions I have ever attended and paid very close attention to. In order to try and give you the information up-to-date, I will post the notes I [...]

YellowPages.com Partners with Microsoft Search for Local Ads
YellowPages.com, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc., has entered a distribution agreement with Microsoft that will include YellowPages.com paid advertising listings on Microsoft’s local search sites. The agreement is expected to launch in April, and YellowPages.com ads will be shown in the Live Search and Live Search Maps properties, including MSN Yellow Pages. “Our network approach to [...]

Link Building Basics Session at SES NY
Allan Dick of Vintage Tub and Bath is moderating the session on Link Building with Debra Mastaler, Dixon Jones and Degrelle. Debra Mastaler from Alliance Link: Understanding link popularity : What is link popularity, why links are valuable. Links are the core to the Internet, ARPA created in 1958, then WWW in 1989 Search engines were born : Archive, [...]

Keyword and Competitive Research Done Right - RankSense
I will be doing several reviews of a newly launched SEO software RankSense by Hamlet Batista. To make the most of my reviews I encourage you to download a free trial version and test the options I’ll be describing. That’s very easy: just download the tool and it will guide you through the whole installation [...]

Gigablast Better than Google or Ask.com : According to Study
Gigablast, a personal favorite and privately owned and operated search engine, just released the findings of their search “taste test” where the majority of study participants, over 55%, found the Gigablast search results to be as good as, or better than, search results from Google. The study compared Gigablast’s and Google’s search results side-by-side, without brand [...]

Niche Marketing and Link Building Resources
The best things about niche link building is that it is (1) highly effective, (2) looks natural, and (3) lets you find targeted audience and like-minded people who will then cite you and link back to your site. 1. Niche social bookmarking networks. When I was just starting a blog, social bookmarking was the first [...]

Google Wants to Heal the World through Non-Profit Organizations
Google has launched its web portal for non-profit organizations. With various Google web tools available for non-profit organizations to use in their advocacy, development and social work, Google wants to help in making our world a better place to live. The Google for Non-Profit site also features bright ideas and tutorials compiled by Google staff themselves [...]

Jason Calacanis &the Mahalo Work Ethic : SearchToons
We’re starting a new ongoing series here on Search Engine Journal of SearchToons, farside style cartoons depicting events in search engines and the search industry. Today’s, the controversial Calacanis and the Mahalo work ethic, inspired by Jason’s post : How to save money running a startup

Ads in a Quality Score World Session at SES New York
As search marketers, quality score has played a huge role in our campaigns determining our bids and positions in the search engines.  I just attended the session, “Ads in A Quality Score World� by panelist David Miller from Yahoo Search Marketing, Joel Lapp from Reprise Media, Jon Kelly from Sure Hits and Frederick Valleys from [...]

How To Compare Results on Different Search Engines
While it still remains unclear how many major search engines we will end up with, it is still wise to track and compare your (and your competitors’) progress in all of the existing ones. By comparing different SEs results you will: get deeper understanding of how search engines work; learn more about your competitors’ SEO techniques; tell [...]

Google Denied EU-Wide Trademark on Gmail Name
Google Inc. lost their recent bid to obtain European Union-wide trademark protection for the term “Gmail”, the name of their web mail service. According to a ruling by the EU’s trademark agency, the Gmail name is too similar to an existing German trademark. A trademark for a slogan owned by German businessman Daniel Giersch contains [...]

Amidst Tibet Protests, China Bans YouTube &Google
China is cracking down on the coverage of riot and demonstrations in Tibet, and has now banned access to YouTube and Google News within the country.  This is an attempt to stop the rapid spread of video footage and reports that have already been widely publicized throughout the world. In addition to YouTube and Google, [...]

Natural SEO : Reciprocal Linking and Interlinking
This is my second natural SEO post attempting to foster FUD-free approach to search engine optimization. This time it’s about two most overused (but still effective if done wisely) link building methods: reciprocal linking and interlinking. Is reciprocal linking useless? Can it harm my site? I would say, reciprocal links are natural. In today’s world [...]

Google Loses Some Search Numbers in February
The latest search engine results from comScore showed the almost the same trend in terms of ranking. Google still topped the charts beating once again the other 4 major search engines. Even the ranking order in both search share and search queries made, are still the same as the previous months. Google’s share [...]

Yahoo Turns to Radio Ads to Attract Search Engine Users
Is the number radio-listening population in the U.S. that significant for Yahoo to consider running (or airing) ads on radio programs to promote its search engine? Elinor Mills of News Blog is reporting that Yahoo has started running ads in the San Francisco Bay Area that runs something like this: “Search engines [...]

.info Domains are Not Worthless!
While domain names with the TLD .info are highly associated with spam because of their low costs, the domains are not worthless or always associated with spam (I heard this about 10 times at SES NY). Although there are many spam sites using .info, there are many other exceptions. Before Aaron Wall launched SEObook, his main site [...]

Skype &Importance of Phone Numbers in a Meta Description
I’m not a big Internet Explorer user but today I’m using IE as my browser of choice. I noticed that when I launch Skype and IE, Skype highlights phone numbers on web sites in the browsers for calling via SkypeOut. I’ve noticed this in Google AdWords ads but today what really stuck out is the description [...]

Successful Networking Tips for LinkedIn and Facebook
This week was an interesting one at Search Engine Strategies New York as for the first time, I effectively used online networking tools to connect with attendees and peers in the industry before attending. The strategy paid off, as multiple people in the exhibit hall brought the point up that they had become my Facebook [...]

Learning About Locations through Wikinear
Wikinear is a simple application that lets users to locate Wikipedia entries for locations nearest to where a user is currently located. It was designed for mobile phones and it’s a good alternative to GPS navigation. Utilizing several technologies from various geographic location tools, Wikinear mashed up these APIs in 200 lines of codes to display [...]

9 SEO FireFox Plugins I Can’t Live Without
Yes, I know there are much more great FireFox plugins but I am sharing only those I am using myself and find really useful. Before I start, here is an overview of what I am going to talk about: Plugin Most useful feature How often I use it SEOQuake Any page instant SEO analysis A few times a day SearchStatus Google, Alexa, [...]

Google AdWords Opens Demographic Bidding to All : Catches Up to adCenter &Yahoo
Google AdWords has opened up demographic targeting (or demographic bidding) to all AdWords advertisers according to the Inside AdWords blog. Demographic bidding lets Google AdWords advertisers target demographic (lifestyle) variables such as age and gender and the targeting can be done on the Google Contextual Network (Microsoft adCenter has offered this since its beginning and Yahoo [...]

Google Pulls Paid Ads from Search-within-Search Results Page?
When Google launched its search within search feature, there was not too much reaction about it. One of the harshest reactions was a guest post on seoSmarty saying that it could mean bad news for site owners. Until now, when a NYT reported that some retailers and publishers were not actually too happy about the [...]

Google Android Phone to be Released By Summer?
Google first unveiled the Android mobile phone operating system in November 2007, and in recent months they’ve been showing the phone off to various media types and tech geeks, swearing them to secrecy about any of the phone’s details.  And now, an accidental slip by Google’s legal advisor, Richard Whitt, indicates that we may perhaps [...]

Yahoo HotJobs Launches New Search Algorithm
Yahoo issued a press release today announcing the launch of a new search ranking algorithm to be used with their HotJobs service.  They’ve named the new algorithm REAL, which stands for Relevance, Engagement, Availability, and Location: R – Relevance: Matching text in [...]

Hackers Forcing Sites to Cloak Search Engines with Link Spam
David Jones from PR Works is probably wondering why he gets no love from Google. Maybe he even did a site: search on the Big G and discovered that his site has been banned. If so, he’s probably wondering why. I don’t know Mr. Jones. He seems like a nice enough guy with some smart [...]

How to Analyze the Internal Power of Your Website
Obviously there are plenty of occasions where you would want to analyze your (or your competitor’s) internal pages strength. Most often these include: you want to deeply analyze how strong your competitor is; you plan to get a backlink to your site (note: I didn’t say ‘buy’ - how you are going to get it is up [...]

Do Links From Foreign Language Sites Have Value?
Usually, we do not cover forum threads, but from time to time, one does pop up which gathers my attention and is blog worthy. Today on DigitalPoint, a thread caught my eye which is titled : Different links with many language make site popular. The DigitalPoint member says that “If you have many sites with different [...]

Searchme : A Refreshing Search Interface
Many have pointed out that the success of Google is as much its relevance algorithm as its simple clutter free approach to the user interface. Now, a search company is working on the interface front to provide a refreshing approach to presentation of search results. The iTunes ‘Coverflow’ inspired view at Searchme lets you browse through [...]

MetaCarta’s GeoSearch News : News and Maps Mashup
MetaCarta has launched GeoSearch News, a Google Maps mashup which serves as a geographic news search engine that displays current news from over 1,400 global news sources on a map. GeoSearch News provides news searches one single destination where users can learn what is happening now anywhere around the world. GeoSearch News lets users specify their [...]

Will Apple’s Push of Safari with iTunes Cut into Mozilla’s Google Money?
When you update iTunes, Apple pushes their Safari browser to you.  It’s not all that surprising that they’d want to do this, considering they now have Safari for Windows, and pretty much told everyone that they’d be doing it.  But nevertheless, the move seems to have ruffled a few feathers, particularly those at Mozilla.  But [...]

Microsoft &Yahoo Both Lose Ground to Google, Would Teaming Up Even Help?
Microsoft is still gunning for Yahoo in hopes that by acquiring the company they’d be able to take on and seriously compete with Google in the online realm.  But according to the results of a new comScore report, taking on Yahoo doesn’t look like it’d help them all that much. In February 2008 both Microsoft and [...]

Launching a New Site : With SEO in Mind &as if Search Engines Did Not Exist
Launch a new site with SEO in mind: 1. Choose a relevant domain name - I am not saying “keyword based” domain as that’s getting more and more difficult, but “relevant” domain that will: help your readers/customers associate your site with your niche; ensure relevant backlink anchor text (people tend refer to a site using its domain name). 2. [...]

Povo Launches : Boston Area Local Search &Community
Niche location local search is not a new concept, various cities have their own local search guides and Backfence was a failed local community site which tried to connect the DC suburbs and never really got off the ground. Povo has launched for the Boston Area, and it seems to be a hybrid of local search [...]

Google Founders Brin &Page Take $1 Salaries
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each opted to take a $1 salary for 2007, folling a trend started by the founders and CEO Eric Schmidt. This comes after both founders lost about $8.5 billion each in wealth / value as Google stocks have taken a dip recently. Google stock taps in at about $450 [...]

Yahoo joins Google, MySpace and others in the OpenSocial Movement
Yahoo just announced that it is finally joining the Google-led OpenSocial Movement. Likewise it is also joining a new non-profit organization spearheaded again by Google and MySpace called the OpenSocial Foundation. Although Yahoo did not specify the extent of its participation to the OpenSocial Movement, it is safe to say that Yahoo is opening up [...]

Social Media Guide for Big Brand Corporate Businesses
The amount of activity and participation of people on sites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, Del.icio.us and other so called social media sites and social networks that make up what we call the new Web or Web 2.0, did not go unnoticed by the big business out there. The possibilities to do something good [...]

2 Ways to Get Intimate with Blog Readers
Like we all know, blogging is not only (or even not at all) about a blogger talking to his readers; it is primarily about communicating with the blog audience. This interaction is much more active if you keep your readers updated on your activities outside your blog: what are you interested in? what do you [...]

Diigo : The End Of Bookmarks?
Diigo is perhaps one of the web’s premier research tools - this is widely accepted. Whether Web 2.0 actually ever existed is irrelevant, but the innovation brought to us these last two years is undeniable. The big question for me has been: “Does the innovation actually do anything for us?” I think I have tested [...]

Google AdWords Slowing Again Says comScore
For the second month in a row, comScore says that Google AdWords spending is slowing down and its advertising growth is low, especially compared to a year ago. Clicks on Google’s sponsored links — four-line ads that mostly run alongside search results — rose 3 percent to 515 million in February from a year [...]

Google Goes Black in Israel for the Day
Google in Israel has issued a black out for the day; not shutting down but serving a black screen with white letters instead of an all white screen with black letters. The results pages however, are still in classic Google white. The Google Israel blackout is in honor of Earth Hour, a global movement to [...]

YouTube gets its own Analytics tool
YouTube has just launched its new Insight analytics tools. Available for YouTube users, partners and advertisers, YouTube Insight displays statistical figures about videos uploaded into YouTube. Just think of it as the Google Analytics of Video. YouTube Insight gives users two categories of video usage data – page views and popularity. Page views for videos can [...]

Google Docs Becoming Web Version of Microsoft Word 2003
I don’t know if the Google Docs developers are intentionally doing it or is it really the way to develop Google Docs into a full-blown web based desktop applciation? Google Operating System has spotted  new changes in the Google Docs interface that would somehow  remind you of the old Microsoft Word 2003 interface. More particularly, [...]

Mail Trends is a useful Gmail Trending Tool, if only it was easier to use
Mail Trends is a Phyton-based tool that lets you generate a visual representation of various statistics of your Gmail accounts. The code was developed by Google Developer Mihai Paparita who wanted to generate the same statistical trending used by Google Reader and Search History.Generating the statistics take a few minutes if you don’t have too [...]

Yahoo Search : Better Than Googling?
In what may be the most upfront marketing message from Yahoo which positions its search engine as an alternative to Google, Yahoo Search sent out an advertisement today to its Yahoo Mail users asking them to stop Googling and try Yahoo Search. The email advertisement is pretty direct and to the point and links to a [...]

Twitterfeed : Bringing RSS to Twitter for Every Blogger
I’d heard about this Twitter fad for a good year or so, but had never really gotten into it (or Twittered) until after the SMX West search marketing conference in early March. It seemed like almost everyone was using Twitter at the conference for various reasons; whether they were to alert others of the sessions [...]

Mobile Search : World of Opportunity
Search, as the work horse of the internet, has delivered much. Though search as a problem is far from solved, there are many advantages that accrue from the imperfection of search engines. Firstly, there is this new skill that one gets to hone in identifying and getting to the answers one seeks from a whole [...]

Google Maps Adds 13 New Cities to Street View
Google’s Street View is growing substantially with 13 new cities, both large and small, from around the United States, and Yellowstone National Park! The new areas are : Albuquerque, NM Anchorage, AK Austin, TX Cleveland, OH Fairbanks, AK Little Rock, AR Madison, WI Nashville, TN Rockford, IL Richmond, VA Spokane, WA St. Petersburg, FL Tampa, FL Yosemite National [...]

Google AdWords Feature: AdSense for Domains Opt Out
Should you opt for the new AdSense for Domains opt out feature, quietly launched with the Google AdWords upgraded Site Exclusion tool? (Author’s Note: This is a long overdue followup to Google AdWords & Domain Parking : Garbage Paid Search?) The site exclusion tool applies to the content network. However, notice what happens if you click on [...]

Google Goes Black in US and Abroad
Google Israel went black on Thursday to celebrate Earth Hour and today in the United States, Google has gone black here in a global effort to remind cities and people to turn off their lights for one hour and spread the awareness of energy conservation. The Google Black concept was first started to try and convince [...]

Youtube Video Analytics : A Video Tutorial and Overview
On March 27th Youtube officially released its first version of video analytics. This release brings new depth and attention to the importance of video marketing. Being the 3rd most trafficked site globally and the fact that the generation Y trend for video viewing has skyrocketed literally making online videos the new TV, according to emarketer, [...]

Google Loses Another Top Exec to Facebook
In just one month, Google has lost two top executives to the wildly popular social networking site Facebook.  First it was Sheryl Sandberg, a Google VP of Global Online Sales, who left to become the company’s new COO, and now Ethan Beard has left the Mountain View monstrosity to become their director of business development.  [...]

Google Brings Robot.txt generator to the Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools has a new tool that would certainly be useful to site owners in making their site Googlebot friendly – the Robots.txt generator. Basically, what this translator does is to automatically generate robot.txt file. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can easily have your site’s robots.txt file. Thus it eliminates the [...]

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